


all flowers in time bend toward the sun

by hamiltrashed



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:02:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamiltrashed/pseuds/hamiltrashed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ache in him is a powerful, needful thing; it yearns for blue eyes looking his way and rough hands on his skin and a kiss he is sure would be as life-affirming as God himself stepping down from the heavens to offer him a home on high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all flowers in time bend toward the sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MermaidSheenaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidSheenaz/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Sheenaz! I'm happy to know you and be part of our little gang with you. You are amazing!
> 
>  _I know you say there’s no one for you_  
>  _but here is one_ -  
>  _all flowers in time bend toward the sun._  
>  \- Jeff Buckley

It burns slow at the very start, but almost from one day to the next, something grows fast like ivy between them, bursts into being like it was always there. True to form, Daryl pulls back hard. He is still learning not to fear letting someone in, even as he leaves the door ajar behind him, hoping. But Rick leans into it and he walks through, because he always will. He’ll always reach out a hand to touch, even if for the moment, his fingers are grasping only at Daryl’s shadow. The ache in him is a powerful, needful thing; it yearns for blue eyes looking his way and rough hands on his skin and a kiss he is sure would be as life-affirming as God himself stepping down from the heavens to offer him a home on high.

In the middle of the night, Rick gets restless with an unholy sense of desire. Sleep is hard-won here as it is, but this new thing is creeping along inside him from head to toe, gnawing its way into his veins as hard as adrenaline. Sometimes, it is put at rest with a quick hand beneath Rick’s blankets. But most times he tosses and turns all night, body a constant mess of motion, mind repeating the thought _come to me_ over and over, as if he can somehow put the notion in Daryl’s head just by thinking the words hard enough.

Rick is sure that it will be soon, but if he’s honest, soon is never soon enough. Sitting idly by while he waits for Daryl to bend toward him like a flower to the sun is putting Rick close to begging. His fingers slip loose an extra button on his shirt now when Daryl enters the room, as if by baring his neck like bait on a fishing line, it will entice Daryl to bite. And oh God, the way Rick hangs on his every word, gambling that any three of them might be the ones he wants to hear, as if they are there already in the palm of Daryl’s hand and all Rick has to do is still his shaking fist and ask him to please, _please_ roll the dice.

He _knows_ that Daryl can feel it, too. There is a thunder inside Rick’s heart, and when it rumbles in his ears, rolls in heavy like a southern summer night, it sounds familiar. It sounds like the _thud_ of a crossbow bolt hitting home, like the hard grit of a voice Rick hears even when it stops speaking. It sounds like hope, like peace. Something so loud could not be missed. And Rick can almost _taste_ the tension, the thickness of it, in the same way you can taste rain when it’s just about to fall. If he could cut it from the air, hold it on his tongue, he knows it would taste like honeysuckle nectar and sugarcane.

Wanting Daryl is like hearing music again. Not in the way Beth sings it, or even in the way it was played just before the world went silent. No - it’s like hearing the static, the crackle on an old 45, when you know the melody will come in but in the moments when you only hear the hiss of dead air, you sing the song to yourself. Rick knows that it will come, but in the meantime, he hums a quiet, half-sorrowful, half-hopeful tune that speaks to the desperation that comes from the waiting.

In the end, when the real song finally comes in clear, it sounds a lot like Etta James, smoky and warm and rich, singing ceaselessly in his ear: _at last, at last, at last_. It happens when Daryl seeks him out, finds him just around a corner as he always is, and his eyes say what he can’t seem to voice. They shine like diamonds, even in the semi-darkness, and give Rick a simultaneous plea and an okay.

And then Rick is grabbing him, pushing him into the wall in one of the hundred empty hallways of this godforsaken prison, kissing him like he’s never kissed anybody, with enough heat to burn the whole world down if it hadn’t already ended. He shudders at the taste of Daryl’s mouth, whole body screaming his relief, his breath stuttering and tripping over itself in his throat as he presses himself into Daryl hard enough to become him. Every bit of him trembles when Daryl slides one hand up under his shirt to rest against the small of his back, to further pull him against him as if they can defy the laws of nature and get closer than they already are.

All of the things that Daryl is speak directly to Rick’s heart. It’s felt like a husk as of late, a mostly-dead thing beating not out of any sense of obligation to keep him going, but only out of routine. But Daryl makes it work hard, not just in the way that it beats faster when Rick sees him or thinks of him, but in the way that it begins once again to pledge allegiance and happiness to Rick like after all this time, it could still owe him anything. But Rick thanks his lucky stars, because when Death comes someday to gather him to its breastbone, it will find him still _alive_ , still breathing in Daryl as harshly as winter air, hard but necessary on his lungs.

Rick has carried his intent so long that it is a blessing to lay it at Daryl’s feet. It feels good, makes the restlessness into a gentle tickle up and down his spine instead of something that eats him alive from the inside. With it is a soft caress of tranquility that Rick hasn’t felt since he was a child, the same kind of peacefulness as going to bed after a day beneath the sun with a full belly and a cool pillow and sleeping the sweet, deep sleep of youth and innocence. Those things are so far behind him now that it takes him a moment to recognise their return in the form of Daryl, whose heart, mind and body are opening to Rick like cherry blossoms so that Rick can lay down inside and know that he is home.

Before now, Rick has wondered sometimes if they talk in different tongues. If Daryl speaks a little too much isolation, if Rick can’t translate his own capriciousness back into something more digestible. But here, they are speaking the same language, and each touch means _trust_ or _love_ or _devotion_. When Rick pulls away to learn to breathe again, when he rests his forehead against Daryl’s, it means in the simplest terms that he is only Daryl’s now, that he cannot bear to sit inside himself any longer. And he is sure that Daryl understands, is repeating it back to him in his own way.

Rick’s mouth brushes against Daryl’s, and when he speaks, his words are on Daryl’s lips, too. “You make it better,” he says, his voice quiet but full of hunger.

And Daryl, eyes still closed and breathing hard, doesn’t have to ask what he means, merely replies, “I’m tryin’ to.”


End file.
